If you come to hang out with Ladies with Tradies to hear we are going to wave a wand over your business and make you feel in ‘total and utter work-life balance’ - then you are about to be totally and utterly disappointed.
Soz.
Instead, I want us to look at your business and personal life as a ‘Lifestyle’ overall. Because I don’t care what all the gurus say, you can’t split the two definitively. It just doesn’t work, and I want to explain why.
Businesses run because somebody cared enough to create them. Somebody cared a LOT to create your business and took risks, and invested time, effort, energy and sacrifice to get it where it is. So, for us to think we can just switch that off at 4pm of an evening is certainly not understanding of what it truly is like to be a business owner.
Generally we LOVE our businesses. What is more important is to make sure that your business has not become an extension of your IDENTITY. More on this for another blog - but essentially what I am getting at here, is that you are NOT your business, so if you currently measure YOUR PERSONAL success as a human being on your BUSINESS results, you may have some serious issues into the future with your mental and emotional wellbeing.
What is more intelligent as a business owner is to make some really clear signals to yourself that indicate if your lifestyle VALUES overall are being imposed upon. This is the visceral ‘I know I shouldn't be’ stuff that rattles round in your head at the times you are not respecting your own boundaries. The times you are ‘working’ when you really feel you should not be.
But let’s not make you wrong on this - let’s just readjust how we respect our own lifestyle boundaries by being kind, considerate and nurturing to ourselves.
Let me give you an example. Jayson and I are business owners. We both have priorities in our businesses that sometimes means a bit of work on the laptop on the lounge in front of MAFS at night. Now, many people will want to make us ‘wrong’ for doing this. This rarely rarely happens in our house, but we are human too - so yes, it does happen. Am I making nighttime work ok, yes and no…… just bear with me here for a second.
What we have made very clear as a ‘lifestyle value’ for ourselves is ‘we don’t work on weekends’ - we refuse. We have also made a clear lifestyle value that says ‘no more than 2 nights per week of lounge laptopping’ - so we have some boundaries around it, and if we are lacking in this space and doing more - this triggers a conversation that starts with ‘is everything ok in business, is this a fleeting situation, or is this something that needs to be dealt with?’
So nobody is made wrong. But everybody (as in both of us) is made to question if we are aligning with our lifestyle values. And we are both made to check in on what is happening and what changes can be made so we don’t slide into a never ending pit of night time working.
So, what other kinds of ‘Lifestyle Values’ can you conjure up for yourselves? Lifestyle boundaries can include: we have 6 weeks of leave for ourselves each year - so you have to make that happen. It could be ‘we never miss 2 weeks of kids sports in a row’ or ‘we have minimum 2 family dinners together per week’ or ‘when the office door closes we don’t go back in for more work’ - it can be anything, you just have to set the boundaries, and then have a mechanism for identification if the boundaries are being crossed.
We are all human, and we are going to slip up. But if you got to have holidays for 5 weeks instead of the 6, you are going to feel so much better about it than not doing it at all.
Lifestyle Values that have good boundaries to support them will always result in healthier happier business owners overall. A level of flex and forgiveness if we slip up is always needed, as long as you come back to those values and realign if you get off track.
If you love your business, you will find it harder to meet your lifestyle boundaries, but I see this as a good thing, it means you really love what you do. But if you are doing it from a place of resentment, that is an issue, and you need to ensure you stick tight to your boundaries or your business will eat you for breakfast. Neither is healthy - too much work because you love it, nor too much work because you ‘have to’ or resent to.
So, what lifestyle values are important to you and therefore what boundaries or goals do you need to set for yourself to maintain a good lifestyle overall. Because your business is a part of your lifestyle, not separate, so you gotta decide how it fits into your lifestyle, not how your lifestyle is going to fit in with your business.
Love to hear your thoughts!
